2007

Just looked back at my goals for 2007 and they included buying a house! Yay, go us, what high achievers - we rock!

This year was entirely dominated by the process of house-hunting, mortgage-applying, income-evidencing (oops, lost the prescriptive trad grammarians there, but can see the self-employed nodding in sympathy), waiting, move-arranging, moving, old house cleaning and finally settling in. And that pretty much covers the whole twelve months.

It hasn't been the best of years in terms of educational opportunity but nevertheless F and I have had great conversations, watched films about World War II, discussed all sorts of stuff around that, learned about Tudor life at the local museum and made fire together with flint and metal. Her movement towards reading continues and she is increasingly able, especially when she doesn't try too hard or overthink it - in June she asked for more active help with learning to read and so this has been intermittent ever since, in short bursts usually, when she is keen for a few days!

I'm just going to pick out a few things that stood out in the year for me.

End of April: The day we decided to give up looking for a house anywhere other than Lewes after all. We had started in Lewes, then decided we would never find what we were looking for, much as we love it here, for our money, so looked in Polegate. Then, suddenly one morning, just as J was going to work, he and I had one of those really short chats where we both admitted we didn't want to keep looking in Polegate after all and decided that we would stay in Lewes and just take as long as it took to find somewhere - there were very few houses coming on in Lewes that were within our budget. Off J went to work.
That evening, as he was coming home, he bumped into the estate agent guy in our road and was offered a viewing the next day of the house 5 doors up the road, which was just about to go onto the market! It was too perfect to miss. We were first to see it, put in an offer straight away and (after a lot of stress and setbacks)... here we are!

Middle of July: F's birthday week - including carnival, lunch out, park, Spring Barn Farm Park with the MTs and the grandmas and Monkey Bizness soft play with a small group of friends too. The weather for all the outdoor bits was just glorious and it felt wonderful to know at that stage that we probably were going to be able to stay in Lewes, to still have our same local shops and park

and continue to bump into neighbours when out and about.

Middle of August: The day we went into Brighton to celebrate my birthday. F and J went on the merry-go-round, we paddled in the sea briefly, had a lovely meal out. At the time I was feeling incredibly tense as I had spent most of the previous 6 weeks trying to produce proof of my income that would be acceptable to the mortgage company (Northern Rock - anyone heard of them? I think they just did one loan too many...). I had got very desperate about it over the weeks and depressed and stressed. I had just submitted my final effort, couldn't imagine what I would do if that didn't do the trick and felt sick with the whole thing. So we headed off for some fun in Brighton and tried to leave the worries behind us. Managed that to a large extent, enjoyed a lovely meal out

and started to relax enough to think 'well, if we don't get it, we don't get it, we will cope' (even though by this time we already had a final get-out date for the old house).

We got home fairly late, it was just about dark, and I saw that there was one message on the answerphone. It turned out to be the definite 'yes' to the mortgage. I called J and F and we listened to it altogether on speaker in the hall in the dark and just cheered! Of course there was also 'The Day we got the Keys'

and 'The Day we Moved', but they were less climactic in comparison.

Low points of 2007 in brief:

We missed a lot of the things we'd planned, due to F having chicken pox,

spraining her foot and various other bugs and things like me having to work too much.

Also I had to work far too hard - I'm lucky I can do it, when needed, but it comes at a price and that price was too high from about May onwards, due to the economics of the mortgage application and the move itself. We will be returning to a more normal balance over the next few months, thank goodness. The whole house thing was incredibly stressful, I can well understand why it is on those lists of life events that leave you in a state. Worth it though, we are very glad to have this house and I'm looking forward to spring here, in particular, now.

Our holiday in Kessingland wasn't as good as the year before, due to rain - we had a hair-raising walk back from Lowestoft along the not-entirely-there cliff path too!

Still, F enjoyed the Sparky shows and we played Peggle on my laptop in the caravan - tie-dye was good, as was Africa Alive.

A group of online friends, having become my best ever online home, fell apart quite suddenly and horribly, just as I was going through the worst of the mortgage stress.

Other quick memories from the year:

Mr and Mrs MT helping us with cleaning and clearing the old house - now that's friendship! Lots of nice times with them actually - singing in the car with Nic, yelling 'It's Chriiiiiiiiiiistmas' at their car in early December, admiring the Downs and playing with J's hat and playing wine-fuelled Bop-It after F's birthday outing.

Pub lunches with A and C and their two - getting easier to see them again every year, we'll be back to playing Risk through the night before we know it!

Writing days (also usually with Nic) - haven't managed to do any writing apart from at these special Saturdays when we go and spend 5 hours focusing on that. Bliss!

Little Ninjas - great for F's balance, flexibility and concentration.

MMs - some great times and some less good times.

C over the road - another new development for F, having a friend who she made independently of me, whom she has visited on her own and who comes over to ours to play.
Local home-ed friends - recently we've got to know some local (i.e. in Lewes) home-ed friends who we will be able to see more of over the coming year I hope.

I managed to lose some weight and get a bit fitter and healthier (another of my goals for the year), and intend to continue with that in the coming year too.
Circus, panto and ballet - trips with grandma Ju that gave us a great deal of enjoyment and excitement.

I think F is currently most concerned with independence - the thing that most often leads to a strop on her part at the moment is when she feels that decisions have been made without properly consulting her. So I aim to give her more freedom and control of what she does this year - I think she really wants much more to be the one deciding who she does and doesn't see and where we go, what we do, etc.

She has brought this up a lot recently and it is definitely very important to her, I can see. We are going to have a new basic structure to our week, with me working Tuesday and Thursday daytimes (still have to work evenings most nights at least for a while). Wednesday will be an out-and-about day, Mondays and Fridays will cover other social stuff and crafts/kits/activities. She is really pleased with this plan and I should be able to give her plenty of choices and opportunities for independence and control within that structure.

Finally, this was the year we kept nearly losing Dozy Mog, but he is still with us, despite some really hairy rescue adventures! Most recently we lost him on our way into town but he sensibly climbed up onto a tall hedge and waited for us.